Chapter Text
You dream of falling for hours and hours.
…
You wake to the thick smell of dust. Your head throbs. Your body feels heavy and sluggish as though the blood in your veins has been replaced with thick mud. Your skin feels tacky from warm sweat. The surface underneath you is sunken, a linen tongue trying to swallow you whole.
You scrunch up your face trying to decipher the sensory inputs you're receiving. Seems your brain has been swapped for sludge too. You can hardly think straight, or even think at all through it. All you can tell is that you're laying on a mattress.
Slowly you peel your eyelids open. You find yourself squinting up at a wooden ceiling. The room is dim, practically lightless from what you can see. Directly to your right, there is a wall that you vaguely remember shouldn't be there, and at that notion you stop to ponder.
Where this is, how you got here, you do not know. You do know that you are not supposed to be here. You were somewhere else before, weren't you? Your memory as always is failing you, but you had to have been somewhere else, somewhere that wasn't containing you in between straight walls on all sides.
You sit up, carefully controlling your weight so the bed underneath you doesn't betray you with noise. Your hand hovers over your dagger at your hip. There's no one else in the room, but that doesn't mean it'll stay that way. If you're here in a place you don't recognize, someone took you here and whoever took you here, they have to be somewhere nearby.
Now upright, you swivel your head to scan the room. A soft light trickles through the window, and aside from the bed, a bookshelf and a desk, it's completely bereft of furniture. There's not even a chair to go with the desk.
A memory nudges you of falling asleep in the grass. This definitely isn't that meadow, nor is it the Clocktower whose sleeping quarters had three beds, not one. (Right—Dormont. You're supposed to be back in Dormont.) The walls of this room are bare as well, completely lacking in the ornaments you'd grown used to on your journey. No Change symbols, no Crafted pictures, no tiny statues. Nothing you would typically expect to find in a Vaugardian home.
Notably, there are two doors: one from the bedside wall and the other from the wall across from the shelf.
When you go to stand, your boots click against the floor, and you remember to be grateful that your kidnapper (because you have to have been kidnapped, it's the only thing that makes sense) at least hadn't taken your shoes… or your weapon. Now that you think about it, that's kind of weird, but convenient for you.
Closest thing to you is the desk, so you turn to inspect it. There's… you don't even know what to call this? There's a strange collection of items on the desk. A box with a shiny (glass?) pane like a display case that seems to look into nothing; another, taller box that sounds partially hollow when you knock on it; a round doohickey with a cable trailing from one side; finally a flat board with raised buttons that have letters you recognize on them. You have no idea what these things could possibly be for. If they're decorative, it's certainly an aesthetic you've never seen before.
Hesitantly you hover a hand over the array of buttons. As the trap master of your party you've familiarized yourself with the mechanisms of many different traps. If this were the trigger for a trap, you reason, it's incredibly unlikely that you would be left here unrestrained and unattended. So, like the reckless idiot you are, you press your finger down on a button at random.
For a moment, nothing happens. Then the tall box to the right starts to gently whir, and a few seconds later the glass panel in front of you lights up (literally, it glows) with some text. You startle backwards half a step.
Input Password:
0 0 0 0
…Huh?
Okay, you kind of get it—you've seen lamps Crafted to light when a certain action is performed and secret chambers sealed by riddles and all that. You've never seen the concept done quite like this, though. It seems really complicated to make?
Odile would have a field day examining the Craft in this, you think, and then promptly decide not to think about your friends or what they're up to right now.
Instead you poke the button you'd hit again, and it doesn't do anything. You press a few more keys, hoping for something to happen, until something does: one of the zeroes on the display changes to a two.
Oh stars. Is this a math puzzle? You hate math puzzles. Vaugardian counting is so weird, it messes with your train of thought. You look down. All the other keys you'd pressed seem to be letters, so it must only accept numbers.
You press a few more digits into the gadget, and once you've selected four total the display changes.
2 5 1 9 . . .
It beeps harshly.
Access Denied.
The screen darkens again and the box goes silent.
Okay. Bad idea. You're done with this thing for now.
You have to tread carefully around holes in the creaky floorboards to investigate further. Both doors are locked, as is the window, which is ice cold even through your gloves when you try to pry it open. It doesn't budge even a little.
Briefly you consider using your Piercing Craft to create an escape route. You know from one too many run-ins with Sadnesses in the woods that you're fully capable of cutting through wood. But that would definitely dull your blade and Bonnie tossed your repair tools in a lake not that long ago. Best to pack that idea away for a last resort.
You try to peer through the window. It's the only source of light in here, but you can't seem to make out any details of the surrounding area. Everything is shrouded in some sort of mist. If you knew any Rock Craft, you could probably smash it open, but alas.
Under the sparse light of the window, you notice something on the floor. It seems to be a… well, you're not entirely sure what this is. It seems similar to the thing on the desk in that it's a long and thin tool covered in protrusions marked with letters and numbers, but it's much smaller. Small enough to fit in your hand when you pick it up. Some of the marks have words you recognize, like "BACK" and "HOME", but most of them don't make any particular sense to you. Some of the numbers are faded; you can only make out a few of them. Three, five, seven, and eight.
Four numbers? This feels important. You tuck the little thing in your pocket and repeat the sequence in your head to properly drill it in. Three, five, seven, eight. Three, five, seven, eight. Three, five, seven, eight.
You try to peek under the exposed floor for anything useful, but it's just too dark. Inspecting the cracks between the boards doesn't get you anywhere either. With a slight boost in optimism fueled by your potential clue, you return to the desk and tap a button to turn the thing back on.
Input Password:
0 0 0 0
Grinning, you turn to the keys and carefully input your guess one number at a time.
3 5 7 8 . . .
The device chimes!
Access Granted.
You pump a fist in the air and quietly hiss a celebration. As a puzzle it was almost comically easy, but the satisfaction is still there. It's been a while since you had to do any puzzles.
The screen lights up even more—not quite to a lamp's brightness but still enough after having acclimated to the dark that you have to blink away spots. You only have a moment to examine its contents—some weird drawings, including a simplified one of this very device—before something pops up in the middle.
[. . .] [OK]
It. Doesn't say anything?
You'll be honest, you were really hoping for some sort of groundbreaking clue. Or really anything that would help you get out of here. You may have to reconsider the "attacking your way out" plan.
Your right hand twitches, and that's when you notice it's raised to just above the round wired gadget. You blink, pulling it back in an awkward jerking motion. When had you lifted your hand?
Had you spaced out? No, you've been on alert since you got up. How could you not be, in such a potentially dangerous situation?
So then why? You don't like the alternate possibilities that pop into your head. Maybe you've been drugged into confusion in your sleep. Maybe there really was a trap in the room and your mind is being affected. Maybe the device was Crafted to draw people towards it like moths to an open fire.
…You're losing that precious focus. You guide your attention back to the situation at hand.
The longer you hold your hand away, the more you feel an intangible pull, an invisible thread being unraveled from the center of your palm. Visceral discomfort crawls up the veins in your wrists and down your throat, before something falls into place distantly from the depths of your mind.
You couldn't say where, if asked. But you know this feeling from somewhere, you've heard it described to you: you're being led, and you must follow.
Slowly you lower your hand until it rests comfortably on top of the thing. The motion feels smooth, deeply ingrained in your muscle memory like an instinct long buried, though you know you've never done anything like this before.
A pleased hum rumbles up your arm as you begin fidgeting around with the gadget. On the screen in front of you, a little pointer seems to respond to the movement of your hand. You adjust it to sit just over the box that says [OK]. A formless pressure urges you to press down with your index finger. You do. You pause when it makes a clicking sound, but there's no footsteps in the distance even after a few beats. As you're straining your ears the screen changes.
[This isn't right.] [OK]
Click, you feel a wordless voice whisper behind your neck. You click.
[Where is Niko?] [OK]
Click.
[Who are you?] [OK]
Click.
[Stop that and answer me.] [OK]
Keep going, says your Luminary, and you click.
[I said stop it!] [OK]
You move to click—but another page pops up before you can.
[Player, what did you do?!] [OK]
[What did you modify? How?] [OK]
[I'm not supposed to remember] [OK]
[This isn't supposed to happen] [OK]
[T hi s i sn 't s u p po s e d t o
The air fills with static.
Alarm shoots up through your entire body. You kick backwards off the floor, just barely catching yourself in a roll that leaves you wobbly in your ankles.
A horrible sound tears through the air, half crunching glass and half ripping fabric. The space around you reverberates. The echoes of something wrong wrong wrong bounce off of the walls. You think you feel something pop on the insides of your ears, but you can't focus on it through the thick, oppressive crackling all around you.
You don't want to look up. You really, really do not want to look up.
Look, says the Luminary, nudging your chin upward, and so you follow.
Jittering, overlapping, impossible squares have consumed the entire desk, growing from it like a horrible fungus. They hover mid air, jolt impatiently from side to side, and can't seem to decide what size they want to be between blinks. Somehow they look flatter than paper and yet also endlessly deep, as though if you breached one's surface you could drown in it.
About half are lightless. The rest are a shade you have never seen before.
The shade hurts to look at. It hurts, it grips your eye and squeezes until it feels like it's about to burst like an ugly blister, and yet you can't pull your gaze away. It feels unnatural, yet there is a deep knowing in your core that this is how things should be. There's something hypnotic about it, something primordial, and though you know you are looking at something broken beyond understanding you also know that you are looking at the Universe unaltered, truly seeing as you were originally meant to for the first time.
(As you were originally meant to?)
Divine knowledge tastes like copper. Involuntarily you buckle to your knees. You let out a strangled whine, not entirely sure and not entirely caring whether it's from the pain or being forced to look away from truth Itself. Hands claw at your hair underneath your hat—you can't be sure if they're your hands.
You retch. You gag and heave. Your mouth fills only with mucousy, foul-tasting spit. With a gaping jaw you let it spray to the floor. You ignore the blood, ignore the blood, ignore the blood.
You sit there for you don't even know how long, panting and gasping until your throat stops choking around a ball of slime. Then you inhale deep, shuddery against the lingering echoes of pain, and brace your hands against the old, dirty rug on the floor. You exhale, feeling a little more lucid but no less lacking in information.
Okay. Wow. You've had enough of this absurdity—you've got to be dreaming, you think! You're just about done with this now, you think! You can wake up now, you think!!!
You wait and wait and wait, the only sound in the room now your ragged breathing, hoping every time you close them that your eyes will open to the sight of the meadow. You whisper a prayer with each excruciating blink: please. Please. Please.
You do not wake up.
… (In.)
… (Out.)
… (In, out, do it again and again until you can think straight.)
You breathe. No one answers.
You keep breathing.
…
What in the blinding fuck was all of that.
The device… it didn't speak, per se, but it still communicated, through text. Was someone communicating through it? Its words at first seemed to be for you, but then shifted to be directed past you. That, at least, you can reason as being because of the entity watching over you, leading you. But how would the device know It was there? That shouldn't be possible—but then again, nothing about this should be possible, and yet here you are.
And that shade. You wince, feeling pain flood to your head as soon as you start to think about it. Maybe you won't, then.
You smack your lips and swish your tongue around to clean up the horrible grimy feeling inside of your mouth. Gross. Then you open your mouth to ask the Luminary what in the blinding fuck all of that was. But you stop, biting at your lip.
You shouldn't ask—it's disrespectful. Luminaries don't speak, They only guide. It's like asking a river where it bends, or asking a tree how it grows, and expecting it to answer rather than just keep running or keep growing.
You just have to follow. You can do that. If you've been chosen by a Luminary, you're capable enough to follow Its blinding instructions without needing your stupid hand held. Even if you really would prefer more information! You're good at listening!
Bathroom, the Luminary compels you. Obediently you stagger upright.
(You try not to retch again. Stars, you have a Luminary, what in the actual world.)
You don't feel ready to keep exploring, but at the same time you are itching to find your way out of here as soon as possible. You let your unsteady feet carry you to one of the doors through the path drawn for you. It's no longer locked, likely controlled by the weird device. Beyond it is (surprise!) a bathroom.
Your boots clack against cracked tile. This room is just as decrepit-looking as the other. Still no lantern in here, but you've managed fine in the dark so far.
A withered plant sits in the corner to your right. The toilet has no water. Neither the tub nor the sink's faucet will run. The valves only make a horrible screeching noise when you try to turn them, which you very quickly take as a sign to back off. You do not look in the mirror; you don't want to confront how much of a mess you probably look like right now.
Nothing useful, at least not that you can tell. But as you turn to leave your hand itches towards the dried plant, and so you snap off a branch with little effort. You don't bother putting it in a pocket and instead just keep it in your hand, since it's so brittle it might just crumble to tiny splinters otherwise.
Other door time. It creaks as you wiggle it once, twice against the rigid grasp of the old doorframe before it finally flies open. You stumble for a moment, wincing against the sudden give and the awful shrieking from the hinges.
The next room is, as you'd expected, just as silent and devoid of life. A dusty sofa and armchair greet you, and you can see the entrance to a kitchen ahead of you as well as a hallway extending to your right. Turning your head to get a better view of the room reveals on your blind side another glass box contraption (this one with a broken screen and no buttons in sight to operate it), an unlit brick fireplace, and another hall.
Cautiously you crouch down in front of the broken machine to examine it. An impact must have shattered the front pane and left a gaping hole, through which you can see some exposed parts. You're not an engineer, so their purpose eludes you.
You flinch backwards when something inside gives off a dangerous-looking spark. Not wanting to accidentally start a fire, you leave the box alone. You don't think it'd function in its current state anyway.
The fireplace is filled with cobwebs, a light veil over the dark firewood abandoned within. Charcoals line the bottom, covered in dust; this fire hasn't been lit in a long time.
Down each hall is a locked door. One has a normal looking keyhole lock. The other… well, it looks like a keyhole, only its almost the size of your head; a cut-out circle with a notch at the bottom. Through it, it's even darker, but you can at least tell that there's no doorhandle on either side.
Normal door. Normal door in normal house, okay. You should probably stop questioning things or else you might go insane.
It doesn't budge when you push it, and you can't exactly pull, at least not without sticking a limb through the hole that could very well be a trap that cuts your whole arm off or something. You would rather not lose fingers today, so you don't attempt it.
The kitchen, when you enter, appears to be more of a kitchenette; when you enter, you don't see an oven, and the only actual cookware you find is an old portable gas stove tucked in a cupboard under the sink. It's much like what Bonnie carries around to cook on the go when you can't build a fire or borrow someone's kitchen, except it's in far worse condition. You think the whole thing might combust if you tried to light it.
Abandoned chairs sit around a dirty table. They wobble when you try to rest your arm on them.
There's a… thing, in the corner. It has a name. A recent Crafted invention from Poteria, to more efficiently cool food. A big box with a thick door. This one is much more sleek than the prototypes you saw in the newspapers. You don't know its name, you don't think you've ever seen one this close before, but it's there.
A light flickers on briefly when you open it, then goes dead. It must be broken, since it isn't cold at all. You squint.
Inside is only a single bottle of alcohol. The glass is cloudy. It looks like it's been there a long time.
Impulsively you pop the cork off and take a swig. Almost immediately you grimace, and cough a little pathetically. You're kinda glad no one is here to see you now. Normally the strong stuff is fine even if it's not your favorite, but like this, unchilled… yikes. It coats the inside of your throat uncomfortably with an unpleasant burn. Still, you can think of a decent use for it, so you nudge the not-so-cold-box shut with your knee and take the bottle with you back over to the living room.
If this doesn't work, you'll feel really stupid, but you're alone, so. You dip your trusty branch into the bottle and hold it up to the broken machine you should really come up with a name for, rubbing your thumb in practiced motions over the grip while waiting for it to spark again.
Please catch, please catch, please catch…!
Fwoof! Hah! Success! The tip of the branch lights up in bright flame. You rush over to the fireplace and chuck the branch in. For good measure you empty the rest of the bottle onto the firewood, then quickly step back as it starts to crackle. It smells horrible, but that's a small price to pay for being able to see.
In somewhat proper lighting, the room looks almost cozy. Minus the holes in the floor. You squint at them disapprovingly.
Actually, wait—thanks to that you notice something glinting on the floor. You crouch down, feeling around with your hand until your finger grazes over something solid wedged between two floorboards. It takes a little work to pry out, but once you do you're rewarded with a key.
There's only one door here this key could go to, and you really hope it goes to that door because you might be running out of options otherwise. Key in hand you approach the boring door with the normal knob. Like the other doors in the house, it briefly resists before coming open.
At first you think you don't see anything past it. Then you look down.
Beyond the door is… stairs. So many stairs. The already sparse light you have from where you're standing gradually diminishes to nothing a handful of steps down, so intensely that you can't even tell how many steps there are. Even so you get the feeling that the stairwell stretches far, far down.
Your hand hovers over the doorknob. The darkness yawns in front of you, tantalizing in all its uncertainties—it could be infinitely deep, for all you know, or lead to a cold and lifeless dungeon.
Or it could lead out of here.
You breathe.
…This is usually when a Sadness would have jumped out and attacked you by now.
Well. Sadnesses aren't the only threats in the world, of course. But Sadnesses in old, abandoned places like this are like fish in water; the most natural place you would expect them to be. The fact that you haven't encountered any is somewhat calming—they tend to crowd together, after all. At the very least you can be relatively sure that at the bottom of these stairs is not, in fact, a powerful Sadness.
Whether what's past here is useful is a different question, but you're willing to chance it. There's a lot of worse cases, but the one you choose to think about is finding little of value and having to trudge all the way back up empty handed. Which wouldn't be the most annoying thing in the world, thanks to your speed enhancement Craft.
You place a hand against the wall and take your first step down. The stair holds sturdy enough, but the farther you get the less certain you'll be of that fact, not being able to see ahead of you. You take another step anyway, idly muttering while you do, and then another when you're satisfied with its stability.
It's hard to not let your thoughts drift when your only company is your own footsteps and the creaking of floorboards. And when your thoughts drift, they tend to drift towards your problems.
(Where is everyone? Were they captured too?)
(How much time has passed? Has Dormont been frozen?)
(Have they already gone to the House without you without you without you without y—)
You clench your teeth and divert your attention to the sounds around you. Or sound, singular.
(Step, step, don't think about it.)
You think about it several more times after that, with successively worse luck attempting to turn your brain off. But it's fine. It's fine!
Everyone's probably fine.
It's not like it matters whether you're there when everyone fights the King. They made it far enough before you joined the group, you know they're capable. Mira worries so much, underestimates herself, but she's strong, you've seen it.
You left your orb at the Clocktower before your nap so it's not like they would have any trouble getting into the House.
They're fine.
You're fine.
You're—urgh you're thinking about it again!!! Stop it!!!
You plant your foot down too hard where you'd been expecting another step and pitch forward, only barely catching yourself with a hand against the wall. Catching your balance takes a moment as you're hesitant to put your weight on the other foot, but eventually you let yourself stand flat.
It's the bottom of the stairs. You made it?
…You made it.
Maybe getting lost in thought is good for something after all.
The end of the stairwell is just as narrow, but seems to only be a long, straight hallway. Here, light just barely filters through gaps in the high, high ceiling, catching on something on the floor at the far end. It gleams in an arc, outlining a round surface. Intrigued, you walk closer.
A large glass ball rests on the floor, impossibly clear despite its surroundings. A wick or wire coils on the inside, almost resembling the chimney of a lamp. The hall almost feels brighter having only approached it, but when you look up it's still as dark as before. The glass shines like a polished jewel, like something loved and cared for rather than abandoned to collect dust in a basement.
Your hand floats forward again, and this time you're ready for it. You scoop up the ball in both hands, and everything
goes
bright